ADVENTUROUS DOCTORS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 19, Issue 469, 18 June 1948, Page 14

ADVENTUROUS DOCTORS

FLYING DOCTOR. By Clyde_ Fenton. Georgian House, Melbourne, ESKIMO DOCTOR, by Aaége Gilberg, ttanslated by Karin Elliott, George Allen and Unwin Ltd. BROTH these books are adventure stories-told, as true adventure stories are best told, with more concern for the tale than for the telling. Both are by doctors with unique practices. and unusual patients but, in all other ways, they are literally poles apart, The Flying Doctor’s round was anywhere an aeroplane could take him in the Northern Territory of Australia; the Eskimo Doctor’s anywhere a sleigh could take him in the district of Thule in Greenland. Doctor Fenton is an impatient, practical, daring Australian who would risk his neck to. save a life-and also to shoot ducks-and his life while he was the Flying Doctor was hectic and hazardous, When he was not in trouble in the air, he was in trouble on the ground. Red tape may not always be as silly as it seems, and passports and ' Certificates of Airworthiness are very necessary things, even if the Flying Doctor did manage to do without them, but Dr. Fenton has a nice wit and an impudent sense of fun, and the story of his battle with The Authorities, who for all practical purposes represent The Enemy, is amusing and exciting. He makes his more dangerous adventures in the air-the time a husky deliriumcrazed stockman fought one slight nurse in mid air, or the time he shared his tiny cock-pit with a snake-sound amusing too, but what is lost in suspense is gained in entertainment. Doctor Fenton has an easy colloquial style, except in his occasional descriptive passages, which are unoriginal. He can draw a character clearly and vividly in a couple of sentences; usually quotes. His book is not, and is not meant to be, literature, but it is the honest, factual story of a man who did a difficult job with courage and humour, and it is good reading. Eskimo Doctor is the story of a different king of adventure, less spectacular, but not less exciting. Doctor Gilberg’s was an adventure in living, an experiment in understanding. He and his wife spent a year in Greenland, living almost, but not quite, like Eskimos, and his book is a clear, careful account of the Life of the Eskimo. The italics are intentional, By the end of the book you feel that you know too much about The Eskimo and too little about Eskimos. Interesting character-studies are started but trail away into generalisations, which make the book seem rather like a sugarcoated social studies lesson. But, if you don’t like text books, the sugar-coating, which is Doctor Gilberg’s very sincere and personal affection for these people, takes away the taste, and if you like your social studies straight, it is never allowed to obscure the facts, and the facts are interesting in themselves. and, to most people, surprising. These primitive people are not, according to Doctor Gilberg, primitive at all, except in the narrowest sense of the word. They have an honest, happy philososphy and ‘they live in peace. The style is a little stiff, possibly because it is a translation and the narrative is sometimes repetitive

and slow, but it is an accurate study of a little-known people, by a scientific observer with an unscientific affection for the object of his study. Both books are illustrated with good photographs.

S.P.

McL.